‘Chough. I’ll not be married to-day, Trimtram: hast e’er an almanac about thee? this is the nineteenth of August, look what day of the month ’tis.
Trim. ’Tis tenty-nine indeed, sir. [Looks in almanac. Chough. What’s the word? What says Bretnor? Trim. The word is, sir, There’s a hole in her coat.’ —Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, Wks. 4. 263.
Fleay identifies him with Norbret, one of the astrologers in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Rollo, Duke of Normandy.
1. 2. 2 Gresham. A pretended astrologer, contemporary with Forman, and said to be one of the associates of the infamous Countess of Essex and Mrs. Turner in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Arthur Wilson mentions him in The Life of James I., p. 70:
‘Mrs. Turner, the Mistris of the Work, had lost both her supporters. Forman, her first prop, drop’t away suddenly by death; and Gresham another rotten Engin (that succeded him) did not hold long: She must now bear up all her self.’
He is mentioned twice in Spark’s Narrative History of King James, Somer’s Tracts 2. 275: ‘Dr. Forman being dead, Mrs. Turner wanted one to assist her; whereupon, at the countesses coming to London, one Gresham was nominated to be entertained in this businesse, and, in processe of time, was wholly interested in it; this man was had in suspition to have had a hand in the Gunpowder plot, he wrote so near it in his almanack; but, without all question, he was a very skilful man in the mathematicks, and, in his latter time, in witchcraft, as was suspected, and therefore the fitter to bee imployed in those practises, which, as they were devilish, so the devil had a hand in them.’
Ibid. 287: ‘Now Gresham growing into years, having spent much time in many foule practises to accomplish those things at this time, gathers all his babies together, viz. pictures in lead, in wax, in plates of gold, of naked men and women with crosses, crucifixes, and other implements, wrapping them all up together in a scarfe, crossed every letter in the sacred word Trinity, crossed these things very holily delivered into the hands of one Weston to bee hid in the earth that no man might find them, and so in Thames-street having finished his evill times he died, leaving behind him a man and a maid, one hanged for a witch, and the other for a thief very shortly after.’
In the ‘Heads of Charges against Robert, Earl of Somerset’, drawn up by Lord Bacon, we read: ‘That the countess laboured Forman and Gresham to inforce the Queen by witchcraft to favour the countess’ (Howell’s State Trials 2. 966). To this King James replied in an ‘Apostyle,’ Nothing to Somerset. This exhausts the references to Gresham that I have been able to find. See note on Savory, [1. 2. 3.]
1. 2. 2. Fore-man. Simon Foreman, or Forman (1552-1611) was the most famous of the group of quacks here mentioned. He studied at Oxford, 1573-1578, and in 1579 began his career as a necromancer. He claimed the power to discover lost treasure, and was especially successful in his dealings with women. A detailed account of his life is given in the DNB. and a short but interesting sketch in Social England 4. 87. The chief sources are Wm. Lilly’s History and a diary from 1564 to 1602, with an account of Forman’s early life, published by Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps for the Camden Soc., 1843.
He is mentioned again by Jonson in Silent Woman, Wks. 3. 413: ‘Daup. I would say, thou hadst the best philtre in the world, and couldst do more than Madam Medea, or Doctor Foreman.’ In Sir Thomas Overbury’s Vision (Harl. Ms., vol. 7, quoted in D’Ewes’ Autobiog., p. 89) he is spoken of as ‘that fiend in human shape.’